Intriguing ideas, but teasing out meaning from this confusing presentation becomes a challenge.
A superhero comic and what it signifies to a writer who can’t draw becomes the meditative center of this graphic novel.
This unusual work consists of three parts. The first is notes for a comic book roughly indicated on blank forms with spaces for publisher (“HEX”), title, issue, and page number, beginning with two unnumbered pages filled with the word “black” and synonyms (blackness, dark, darkness, inky), along with the word “CORY.” Numbered pages 1 to 20 contain few drawings except for a superhero silhouette, mostly consisting of captions, dialogue, and instructions for the artist on what to draw. For example, “a chance comet shields Doby from the blast” or “still supposed to look like half a skull.” Four more pages, still presented as if on the blank forms, provide a full-color, dialogue-free sequence that bears a tangential relationship to the foregoing. In the last section, titled “My Hero” and no longer using the form backdrop, the author provides autobiographical details about the conception of this story and his growth as a writer, giving thanks to those who contributed. It’s hard to figure out what’s going on in this puzzling offering from Jones (Mapping the Interior, 2017, etc.). Readers gather that Lance and Kenneth, two high school friends, are the creators of a comic book called Dr. Never, “foiler of dastardly deeds,” featuring Stardillo, Korga, and Rexo. They’ve succeeded enough to have a merchandising deal and action figures. This is mixed up with memories and present-day reflections in a baffling manner, with elliptical statements that leave out information (who is Cory, mentioned early on?) or make the reader hunt for it. (The best guidance is the book’s back cover blurb, which explains that Jones and his best friend, who once dreamed of collaborating on superhero comics, now have children of their own who play together, as they once did, and with action figures based on the author’s own comic book.) In addition, the emphasis on how unusual it is to write but not draw a comic seems odd, given the enormous success of Harvey Pekar.
Intriguing ideas, but teasing out meaning from this confusing presentation becomes a challenge.Pub Date: June 27, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-9986667-0-9
Page Count: 46
Publisher: Hex Publishers
Review Posted Online: July 31, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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